Mill Town Girl Read online

  She opened the back door. The yard was empty. The women of Churchwall Street, the decent ones, spent more time at their front steps than they did in the yard. They were afraid of missing anything. They scrubbed their front steps, whitened them with the donkey-stones they got from the rag-and-bone man, whitened the strip of flagstones in front of their houses, then stood, apron-wrapped and bare-armed, passing judgement on all that came their way.

  Under the sink she kept a white enamelled pail and tall, matching water-pitcher. She took them outside, to get her water. In the walled yard were two WCs to the six houses and they were set at the far end of the yard, where the old water tap was. Nowadays they had water in the kitchens and the tap was used for yard-swilling and filling dolly tubs on washdays. Someone had left it on and Carrie put down her pail and went towards it to turn it off.

  Just as she was bending down to pick up her jug she felt someone tapping on her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin with alarm. It had happened again. She hadn’t seen anyone come into the yard. She’d have to get new glasses. She straightened with a little cry and turned to look at the woman who stood before her.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

  The woman was short, thin, shapeless and poor-looking. She wore a fringed shawl around her shoulders and the face above it was lined and had a peevish set at the mouth. She had a new travelling bag in her right hand and, in her left, a walking stick.

  ‘Sure an’ I’m looking for Patrick Kennedy,’ the woman said. ‘I went to the Temperance Hotel. It was closed. The man in the next-door shop told me to come here. He said Miss Shrigley who used to keep the hotel would know where he had gone to.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Carrie cut in. The woman had hardly stopped for breath. What a babbling, gabbling creature she was.

  ‘So I’m looking for Miss Shrigley.’

  ‘I am Miss Shrigley,’ Carrie said in a quiet voice. ‘And what are you wanting with Patrick Kennedy?’

  The woman gave her a sharp look. ‘I’m wanting to find me husband,’ she said. ‘Me fugitive, wandering, bankrupt husband.’

  Carrie felt as if she had been struck. The colour drained from her face. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and her voice, when she answered, had taken on the high note that came when she was angry, only this time it was fear making it strange to her ears as she said, ‘Mrs Kennedy?’

  ‘Mrs Kennedy indeed. That I am. Then you’ll be the good woman he wrote about. The one who’s lent him the money?’

  Her legs were weak. Nausea washed over her. The blood drained from her head. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. She did not know how she got into the cottage; how she found herself sitting across the hearth from this old woman; from Patrick Kennedy’s wife.

  When Bridget Kennedy left the house Carrie sank into the armchair by the fireside. She felt faint, sick and deathly cold. She would dwell on the story the woman had told to her. She must believe it. So patently true was it, so clearly had that little woman been speaking the truth that Carrie knew she had been cruelly deceived.

  Her hands had turned to ice. She let them lie, limp in her lap, as she thought.

  She had sat in this very chair for an hour, listening, nodding, pretending to quiet indignation when all the time she’d wanted to scream and rage. She’d wanted to run from the house, to run to the building site, to beg him to tell her that they were lies, all lies; that he wasn’t an undischarged bankrupt and under threat of imprisonment; that he wasn’t a smooth-talking rogue who had charmed her out of her inheritance; that, most of all he was not, could not be, married to the worried little Irishwoman who faced her.

  She got to her feet, went into the scullery and was violently, painfully sick into the little, brown, slop-stone sink. Tears followed her sickness, then trembling and quaking she held on to the edge of the sink until her hands felt as if they were blocks of stone. As the shaking subsided, as the sensation of spinning like a top went from her, Carrie felt numbness, blessed numbness descend upon her.

  If she allowed, even once, she thought, her senses take charge of her she was lost. She knew what she must do. She must salvage her inheritance. She would tidy herself, put on the face the town had always seen, become again the fine and upright Miss Shrigley.

  Half an hour after Bridget Kennedy left the cottage, Carrie, dispassionate and resolved, entered the offices of a firm of Macclesfield solicitors, Messrs Gregson, Tatton and Henshaw. She was shown into the inner office and greeted by Joseph Gregson, the senior partner, who said, ‘Sit down, Miss Shrigley and tell me why you are here.’

  ‘You know that I have sold the Temperance Hotel?’ Carrie said. She saw him nod gravely. ‘And no doubt you and all the chapel thought I had taken leave of my senses.’

  ‘Er . . . We . . . I made no judgement about your affairs, Miss Shrigley,’ the old man said. ‘Though you will remember that I cautioned you.’

  ‘You did. You told me that I would be better advised to continue running the lodging-house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I would not hear of it?’

  ‘We can all make mistakes.’

  Carrie interrupted him. ‘I should have taken your advice. The man who sold the building company is an undischarged bankrupt. It wasn’t his to sell.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘I want to have him arrested. For fraud. Can you help me or do I go to the police?’

  ‘Miss Shrigley, this is a clear case of fraud and false pretences. The man – your relationship with him was purely a business arrangement?’

  She saw that he was asking merely an obligatory question. ‘There was no other reason for my action than a wish to secure a future for myself and my sister, Mr Gregson.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so, Miss Shrigley,’ he said. ‘Then, since there’s no question of collusion, I shall do my best to save what I can of this – this business for you.’

  ‘Thank you. And please, please make haste.’

  Once the door of the office closed behind her Carrie went back to Churchwall Street to wait for Jane.

  But where was Jane? Jane should have been home hours ago. She would have to tell Jane everything. She never wanted to see Patrick Kennedy again. If she had to appear as a witness, of course, she would do it but from that moment on, she told herself, an episode in her life was over. A gate had closed.

  Chapter Four

  Eight months later, in Wells Road, on the 10th of May 1921 Carrie waited at the gate of number twenty-three.

  It was six o’clock in the morning, just light and with the cool freshness that speaks of a warm day ahead. The house behind her was the last in a row of new semi-detached houses, most of whose small front gardens had not been cleared of builders’ tools and rubble.

  She wore a loose dress of brown cotton that drooped to her ankles, a long, shapeless cardigan of lighter brown and, on her feet, expensive lizard-skin shoes with turned Louis heels and buttoned straps. She appeared impatient; she peered short-sightedly, right and left, up and down the quiet road until she saw Jack Cooper’s painted milk trap turn the corner. She pressed her lips tight and waited for him to cover the few yards to her gate.

  Jack Cooper was surprised to see Miss Shrigley here for she’d not been seen at her house in Churchwall Street for almost two months. When he’d asked, her neighbours there told him she’d gone to Ireland to find her young sister and bring her home.

  He saw her as a stony-faced woman who rebuffed all attempts at friendship; not the sort to pass the time of day in the kind of exchange some of his customers enjoyed. He pulled the horse up in front of her and waited for her to speak.

  ‘Ask your missus to come. I want her to see my sister. Tell her to bring her medicine bag,’ she said in a hushed, anxious voice though there was nobody to hear her.

  Jack Cooper pushed his grey hair from his forehead, climbed down the wooden step at the back of the trap and looked directly at her.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked. />
  ‘My sister and her husband have come home.’ She spoke urgently, inclining her head towards him, as if afraid she’d be overheard. ‘Jane had her baby last night and she wants to get rid of her milk. Your Martha’s to come down and give her some herbs.’

  Jack knew his customers. He’d been delivering milk in the town for thirty years. Carrie Shrigley seemed ill at ease for the first time since he’d known her.

  ‘Get rid of her milk?’ He tucked his hands into the pocket of his linen coat and replied in a voice at once abrupt and disdainful. ‘I’ve never heard such talk. Why would she want to do that?’

  ‘Well, she does. It’s rubbish. She’s teeming with it. And it’s rubbish.’ Her face was red and angry now and she took a step nearer to him, as if to let him know who was the authority on the subject. ‘She wants to get shot of it and you’re to bring a quart every morning. From your best cow.’

  Carrie Shrigley evidently did not like being spoken to as if she were a numbskull. Her diffidence had been short lived for she glared at him. ‘And see it’s fresh, Jack Cooper. From a cow that’s got new milk.’ She handed him an earthenware jug. ‘We’ll have a quart now, an’ all.’

  Jack lifted the lid of a tin churn and began to stir the milk with a long-handled ladle. ‘She married Danny Kennedy, then, your Jane? She got married in Ireland, did she?’

  ‘Yes. And I want no more talk about it.’ Carrie Shrigley took the jug and looked at him in the eye. ‘So get your Martha here today and we’ll have done with it.’ She opened the wooden gate and began to walk with deliberate steps to the front door then, turning, she added. ‘You can start leaving me a pint a day in Churchwall Street from next week. I’m only stopping here until tomorrow.’

  ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A girl. We’re calling her Rose.’

  ‘Hup, hup.’ Jack moved the horse along to the next pair of houses. So, Carrie Shrigley had come out all right in the end. After that big court case, Patrick Kennedy was doing time in Strangeways and she’d got what was left of his business. She’d taken a job in a mill and had borrowed money to have the houses finished. One or two were occupied, the others were being done.

  Nobody knew for sure if Carrie Shrigley had sold or rented them out but she’d kept number twenty-three Wells Road for herself. She’d a good, sharp head for business. But she’d not been so sharp at seeing what was right under her nose. It was no surprise to anyone but Miss Shrigley when her little sister ran away to wed Danny Kennedy in Dublin. The sharp-minded business woman did not see that the younger Irishman and her little sister had fallen in love.

  And it had been no surprise to anyone in Macclesfield when Miss Shrigley went to Ireland to find them and order them to return. Jack Cooper filled the jugs and bowls that were set out on the front porches of the houses. It was going to be a warm day; a good day for a new-born baby. ‘Hup, hup,’ he said to horse. ‘We’ll be back again later, old lad. We’ll have to get Martha down here with her herbs and potions.’

  Carrie closed the front door quietly behind her. She did not want to wake the baby in its first sleep. She took the jug of milk to the kitchen and set it in a shallow pan of cold water before placing a saucer and linen tea towel over the top, wetting the ends of the cloth to keep the milk cool as the water evaporated.

  She went back into the living room after she had done this and sank into the wooden-armed easy chair by the fireplace.

  Well, she’d done it. She’d disguised her pregnant state under tight corsets and loose clothes until the seventh month when she’d gone to Ireland to find Jane and Danny. Even they had not guessed how far gone she was, but it was not only for her sake they had returned. She’d found them, half-starved, in lodgings they couldn’t pay for. They had lied about Jane’s age to get married and were afraid to return to England in case Danny had committed a crime in marrying her.

  Carrie gave them money for another four weeks’ residence, extracted promises from them that they would come home and caught the boat to Liverpool.

  When she came back she’d kept out of sight in this house for the last month, only going outdoors into the garden; having her groceries delivered to the back door. She’d carried it well, her pregnancy. Being tall and wide hipped she had ‘carried it all round’ and though she’d looked as if she’d put on a stone in weight it had been easy to conceal her condition until the last month. From the eighth month she had stayed indoors; just sitting, filling her days with knitting and stitching.

  Then finally, last night, only hours after Jane and Danny came back she’d delivered her own baby in silence, here on the floor, whilst her young sister slept upstairs with her feckless husband.

  Between her pains she’d spread a clean sheet over the linoleum and brought out of the cupboard the binder strips of white flannel and the baby garments in white wool and winceyette she’d prepared and hidden months ago. She’d kept the fire in so there’d be hot water for washing afterwards.

  In Churchwall Street the women helped one another in childbirth. They couldn’t afford doctors and midwives and even if you kept yourself to yourself, as Carrie did, someone would come to the door when a neighbour’s labour started. Since she’d gone to live there she had been present at four births; the last one Mrs Gallimore’s.

  The one before that she’d delivered herself, so she’d known what to expect. She had never cried out once. When her pains were at their height she’d ground her teeth and forced herself to be quiet, telling herself that the worse they were, the nearer it was. She’d propped herself against the armchair and braced her feet against the steel fender, her hands gripping the chair arms above her head.

  She’d not been able to stop the grunting and panting noises she made at the last, when she thought the final efforts were beyond her, but she’d known what to do when, after the last, most sustained and prolonged one, the body of a girl-baby was out. She’d not even needed to slap her bottom. She had gasped for air and given a great cry as she came.

  Carrie had tied and cut her own cord and laid the baby aside, wrapped in an old sheet, until she expelled the afterbirth, all in a piece. She only rested ten minutes before she got up, cleaned herself up and dressed. Then she carried the baby to the kitchen and laid her on the wooden draining board while she filled the deep sink with warm water. She washed the peaceful infant and dressed her, checking carefully to see that the limbs moved properly.

  She slid her little finger inside the baby’s mouth to check that there was no cleft palate before placing her in the cradle she’d earlier brought from the attic. Then she’d gone outside to wait for Jack Cooper.

  There wasn’t a lot to it really, she thought. She didn’t know why some women made such a fuss, screaming and shouting. And she would not come over all daft like some she’d seen slopping all over their babies. She couldn’t, anyway. Jane would bring it up for her while she went to work.

  Carrie ran a hand through her hair, her long fingers raking through the damp ginger waves as she felt in her cardigan pocket for a hairclip. She fastened it and leaned back again, her head on the thinly-padded chair back. She felt nothing yet. No surge of emotion. No rush of maternal affection. And she was glad. The child must never know she was its mother.

  Only Jane and Danny Kennedy would know, besides herself and, soon, Martha Cooper. But the farmer’s wife was a good woman who’d keep her own counsel. Martha had delivered dozens of babies in her time, and people knew that not a word of their business would ever go past the door on Martha Cooper’s lips. She’d do for Carrie what she did for the women whose babies were stillborn – get rid of what was there and bind her tight.

  The baby stirred and Carrie turned her head to look. As she watched, a tiny fist came up to her baby’s mouth and the little jaws began to work, sucking at clenched fingers so small and perfect.

  Most of the babies Carrie had seen were ugly little things, like wrinkled monkeys. But she, who must be unsentimental, could see that her own was different. To tell the truth she h
ad never seen such a beautiful baby. The face and head were round, not squashed or squeezed like some first-borns. She wasn’t even red-faced but had a pale, translucent skin and a head covered with fair, downy hair. The baby was snuffling, her fists were open and her tiny fingers clawed feebly at her smooth, round cheeks. Carrie pulled herself together, reminded herself of her intention. She mustn’t suckle the child.

  In the cupboard were two boat-shaped, glass feeding bottles with red rubber teats and valves. There was milk in the larder and everyone knew that babies didn’t need feeding for hours after birth. Once Jane got up she’d go to bed and sleep. She was tired.

  The sucking sounds were getting stronger and the infant was beginning to whimper – and now what was happening? Her breasts began to prickle and sting in response to the cries and she could feel the milk begin to run inside her dress. Dark patches were appearing on the front of her loose bodice.

  Should she wake Jane and tell her to come downstairs? No, she’d do what had to be done, this once, though she’d sworn to herself not to.

  Carrie lifted her daughter on to her lap and laid her across, flat on her back as she slowly unbuttoned the bodice of her brown cotton dress, leaning forward as she did so, lifting the baby’s head until the little searching mouth fastened on to her large, comforting nipple and the tiny hands reached up to the big, warm breast.

  Her face softened as she felt the strong little jaws pressing, heard the loud, gulping sounds of the baby and felt, deep inside herself, a tightening as if invisible laces were being drawn together, binding the little creature to her as surely as if she’d never left her body.

  And now, as Rose’s sucking settled into a steady pulling Carrie felt the other side dripping, losing its milk in an unstoppable stream. She gently lifted her baby, drew the nipple away from the eager little mouth and turned her around to face the other breast.